Seeking Refuge: Fly Away Home

Jennifer Weiner's new book will heal you

At a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, 57-year-old Sylvie Woodruff learns of her New York senator husband's extramarital transgression. Jennifer Weiner's eighth book, Fly Away Home (Atria Books, available July 13), explores what happens to a family after the press conference ends and the media has moved on. As Sylvie's life comes undone, she and her two daughters (who have loads of problems of their own) retreat to Connecticut. There they slowly navigate pain, regret, and mistakes. Call it chick lit if you'd like—this New York Times–best-selling author proves again that she writes the best page-turners around. I spoke with Weiner about her newest novel, political scandals, Rosie O'Donnell, and her go-to collection!

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ELLE : It seems like every week we hear about another philandering celebrity or politician. What pulled you to this story—what made you want to give Sylvie a voice?Jennifer Weiner : I think like many woman who follow pop culture, I was so fascinated with all of these stories of politicians behaving badly—with each one worse than the next. It wasn't enough to just have an affair—it was 5,000 taxpayer dollars spent on escorts and he's left the state and his aides don't know where he is and he's visiting his Argentine mistress. The stories seem to get more and more outlandish. I was always interested in what the wives were doing. I remember watching the press conference that Eliot Spitzer gave and seeing Silda Spitzer standing up there and looking kind of numb, and I was just thinking, "She's Harvard educated, she's bright and has her own work, and is a respectable person, so why is she there?" What's the right thing to do if you're the wife in this case? Do you do the press conference, do you kick him out of the house, do you just not say anything, kind of like the Sandra Bullock approach, and then surface three months later and be like, "Oh, I adopted a baby"? I'm just really interested in what the woman's role becomes in a case like that. I wanted to give her some reasons. I like that we learn that she decides to do this press conference so that her daughters won't have to, and honestly that makes sense to me.

ELLE : You also explore a young and successful woman's involvement in an extramarital affair. Why did you want to tell the story of this woman's transgression?JW : I'm interested in the fact that things aren't always black and white in the choices people make. It's very easy to divide the world into sinners and victims. I wanted to complicate that question a little bit. You have Diana, who's married but unhappy and lonely, so I think even though she is doing this terrible transgressive thing, it becomes sympathetic in a way. I think that's true to life, which is that there are very rarely things that "this is 100 percent the right choice to make and this is the wrong choice to make." I think it is always more complex and more interesting than that.

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ELLE : This is your eighth novel. Fly Away Home shares a common topic with your other books: They all focus on and deal with how woman view and treat their bodies. In the beginning of Fly Away Home, Sylvie says she has "grown up to be a 57-year-old professional dieter, a woman whose only real job now that her daughters were gone was staying twenty pounds thinner than she'd been in law school."JW : You know whose line that is? There was a New Yorker profile of Monika Lewinsky back in the day, and it said that she was 24 or 25 and she sort of drifted through college and wandered into this internship and the only thing she knew how to do at her age was diet. I was so struck by it that I knew I wanted to use that idea in a book somewhere—a woman whose real job was managing her body. I think that is job one for a lot of women.

ELLE : Her daughter, Diana, has somewhat of an addiction to running. It's something she does to cope and the one thing in her life that she seems to be able to control.JW : She's interesting, too, because she had such scorn for fat people or for addicts, because her whole attitude is she can deal with anything—you just need to work harder or go for a run and buckle down and study, and of course she becomes completely derailed by this guy. That was fun to write.

ELLE : Why do you feel it's so important to intertwine these body-image issues into your novels? So many women are obsessed with their body image—what do you want your readers to take from your characters' stories?JW : When I started writing, I was single and in my late-twenties, and I really wanted to tell the story of a bigger girl who got the happy ending and didn't have to be skinny to get it. That was an important story to tell myself because I was still at that point hoping for my own happy ending. Now, I have daughters and I think a lot about the messages that they get in the world. It just seems like there is more and more pressure in more and more places to be perfect and skinny and beautiful and useful-looking all the time. You can't ever gain weight, you can't ever look old, you can't ever have wrinkles, and you can't ever have leg hair—like, God forbid. It's hilarious to me. I would like my books to be something that tells a different story, that there are women who look all different ways who get their happy endings and have great jobs and great loves and, you know, really great lives. I want that message out there in the world for my daughters and for everybody else's daughters.

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ELLE : Diana is in an unhappy marriage. She says that she arranged her own marriage; however, in the beginning of the book it's almost like she's trying to convince herself that she needs to stay in this marriage for her son. Why do you think this was so important to her?JW : She's the oldest daughter of two very smart, high-achieving parents, and I think she was someone who had a lot of goals for herself. She had this list in her head—I think a lot of women have a list in their head of how old they want to be when they get married and what kind of guy they want to marry. For Diana, the list did not serve her very well. I think her story is about learning to cut herself a little slack because she's somebody who doesn't give herself a break or give anyone else a break. I think she needed to have her marriage implode to learn that it's okay to fail and to not meet the goals you set for yourself, and it can still be okay. It wasn't about loving her husband, and I don't think it was entirely about what was best for her son. I just think she didn't want to have failed at anything.

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ELLE : Why do you think even today there are woman who are reluctant to leave their unhappy marriages when children are involved?JW : I think in the '70s and '80s, people were getting divorced left and right. It was kind of "I need to go fulfill myself, I need to go be free and explore." I was in high school in the '80s, and all of the dads were leaving—my dad left, my best friend Pam's dad left, my friend Mindy's dad left. I think that people maybe got divorced too quickly back then. Research says that Generation X does not want to get divorced because so many of our parents did, so I do think there's a trend for woman to stay in a marriage maybe when they shouldn't or for men to stay maybe when they shouldn't, where 20 years ago people were leaving when maybe they shouldn't have.

ELLE : You've said before that you write what you know. So, did you have a relationship with a no-good, cheating boyfriend?JW : Actually, I don't think I ever did. I was never in a situation like Sylvie. I've certainly read everything I could get my hands on – lots of memoirs, lots of profiles. A lot of that is sort of trying to imagine what it would be like, and it's so interesting because Sylvie is so different than I am. It was a challenge, but it was one I really liked.

ELLE : A New Jersey rest stop seems like a "poor place for a life to end" as Sylvie says. Why a rest stop?JW : Literary reason: because rest stops are kind of nowhere. They're places out of place. No one belongs there. And also, my mom told me that my parents were splitting up at a rest stop. We were on our way back from looking at colleges, and she told me that my dad was moving out, so I use it wherever I can in my books. I can't ever go there—I have to look away when we drive by.

ELLE : You recently ran in Philadelphia's 10-mile Broad Street Run. How did you do? What was your motivation behind this race?JW : It was like, 90 degrees. It was the first hot, humid day of spring, and the race organizers kept sending out emails saying "It's going to be really hot, please drink lots of water, please race prudently." I was so scared that I probably ran even more slowly than I needed to. I drank water at every water station, I walked through every hydrant. A friend talked me into it. I was never a runner. It was the one thing I hated the most. When you have little kids, it's the easiest exercise to get out and do. If you have a spare 30 minutes, you just put on your shoes and running bra and go do it.

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ELLE : You're a member of the Free Public Library board in Philadelphia. There have been a lot of cutbacks to public libraries across the country. Why are libraries so imperative to communities?JW : I think libraries are essential to any community—not just in terms of books or taking kids to story hours, but they are one of the important social centers where people can go and get help writing their resumes and figuring out their tax forms or immigration stuff. Unfortunately, they are seen as expendable, so whenever the economy hits a rough patch and they're looking for places to cut, it's like, "Oh, well, the library, they'll get along somehow," and they always do, but they are such a vital part of any city or any town. I went to the library a lot as a kid, and I just read everything I could get my hands on and dreamed of the day when I would write a book and maybe see it there.

ELLE : What can ELLE.com readers do to support their local libraries?JW : They can donate money; they can donate time. I would say, go online and see what your local library needs, because probably there is something you can do to help.

ELLE : You recently met Rosie O'Donnell while filming a segment for the Rachael Ray show. What was that like?JW : She was fantastic. She was really, really nice to my mom. I don't think I've ever seen my mom so flustered and excited and kind of out of her mind. Rosie sent me a signed book, and I gave it to my mom for Mother's Day. There are four kids in my family, and I'm number one right now. I let my mom talk to her about how my mom discovered she liked women. I thought that was more important.

ELLE : What are your thoughts on her coming back to daytime talk TV now that Oprah is scheduled to say goodbye in 2011?JW : I loved her original show. I thought she was fantastic on The View. I like that she's opinionated and thinks about things. I'd love to see what she does next.

ELLE : Did you and Rachael whip up those scrumptious Magic Bars you wrote about in Fly Away Home?JW : No, I didn't get to cook anything. I just got to talk. Magic Bars are fantastic. My friend Debbie makes Magic Bars, but I'm afraid to ask what's in them—it's got to be a ton of butter.

ELLE : President Obama just nominated Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. Why do you think there is so much focus on her weight, looks, and sexual orientation?JW : It's driving me insane. I just want to be like "Okay, she wants to be on the Supreme Court not on America's Next Top Model, so who cares?" I don't remember any male nominee getting this much blowback. It's not enough to be brilliant and have gone to Princeton and Harvard and have been a law professor and have this amazing legal mind. If you're not hot, then that's all anybody is going to talk about. I think that before the Internet, people thought these things or maybe said them to their friends, but now I feel like it's part of the public record, and that really disturbs me. Everyone is leaving these hurtful comments. Once my daughters are old enough to understand these things, I want to be like "You know what? We're not having the Internet in our house. We're raising you Amish." Is everyone in the world angry all the time? Because if you spend any amount of time reading these comments, it does feel that way. Everybody is in this deceiving culture of rage that only looks normal.

ELLE : You recently pitched a pilot to ABC titled Jane and Dick. Do you have any available updates on this project?JW : I had a development deal with ABC where they were like, we love your idea, we love your characters and your voice, and we want to do shows about smart, funny women. I signed this development deal, and the writers' strike happened like, 10 minutes later, and by the time the dust settled, there was already someone else in charge of the network who did not want so many shows about smart, funny women. It's heartbreaking, because I think there are such good stories to tell and such good actresses to cast. I think what we're stuck with is the woman who is insecure about her body and getting older, like Courteney Cox on Cougar Town. Lord love Courteney Cox, and I think she's very funny and a fabulous actress, but it's like, is that who we're looking at—this woman who worries about these things? If so, we are all really in trouble. I'm still hopeful. I wrote a show that I'm really proud of, and there's still a chance that the network might change its mind or someone else might want it. You never know. I had a really interesting experience out there [in Los Angeles], I met some really smart people, and I learned a lot.

ELLE : When your girls are old enough to read your novels, what do you hope they'll take away from them?JW : I think about this all the time. I hope they buy the idea that there are all kinds of happy endings for all kinds of women. Your job in life and as you grow up is to make your way in the world and get to your own happy place, whatever that ends up looking like.

ELLE : I read that you recently bought an $800 dress for your last book tour. That's quite the splurge! Who's your favorite designer?JW : I'm wearing all of these pieces from the Lafayette 148 New York collection. I'm just having a lot of luck with their clothes. The problem with social networking is that I can't keep wearing the same dress. I used to be able to buy a great dress and wear it everywhere, but now that I'm on Facebook, people take pictures and post them. For more on Weiner and her new novel, visit her website at http://www.jenniferweiner.com.